I want to be very clear to everyone that this project is MASSIVE in scope. The Petersburg Campaign lasted almost 10 months, involved hundreds of thousands of men, and saw 80,000+ casualties. The Official Records for the campaign fills 3 volumes (in three parts each) for a total of nine books. Other portions of the campaign are contained in other volumes of the Official Records as well. This is a site I plan to be slowly working on for a long, long time to come. I plan to properly annotate all information on the site, in effect making it a portal for further research.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the content you’ll find freely available at Beyond the Crater:

The Official Records volumes on the Petersburg Campaign, report by report: Like Harry does at Bull Runnings, I am slowly adding the reports found in the Official Records to Beyond the Crater. Eventually, the goal is to include all of the reports and correspondence from Volume XL , Parts 1,2, and 3 (Serial Numbers 80-82 which cover the Petersburg Campaign from June 13-July 30, 1864); Volume XLII, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Serial Numbers 87-89 which cover the Petersburg Campaign from August 1-December 31, 1864); and Volume XLVI Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Serial Numbers 95-97 which covers the war in the East from January 1, 1865 to the surrender at Appomattox Court House).

A bibliography of the Petersburg Campaign: This area is a work in progress. There is a solid foundation in place, but I hope to eventually create the most detailed bibliography of the Petersburg Campaign ever attempted. As new books are released on the Petersburg Campaign and I review them, they will be added to the bibliography. I want to include unit histories in this section eventually.

Maps of each battle and raid which occurred during the Petersburg Campaign: I have all of the National Park Service and Wikipedia maps of the Petersburg Campaign which are in the public domain. Despite this status, I have fully sourced each map with a link back to the originating web sites. The Civil War Preservation Trust was also kind enough to give their permission to reproduce their Petersburg maps at Beyond the Crater as well. I hope to obtain written permission from the authors/publishers of various books and articles on the Petersburg Campaign to use their maps as well, but this will necessarily be a slow process and will no doubt result in some negative responses.

I recently signed a deal with News in History, a web site which allows users to view old newspaper articles. This will allow me to reproduce newspaper articles specifically pertaining to the Petersburg Campaign. Details on this are not solidified yet so I won’t elaborate until the pieces fall into place.

Another addition I hope to include is diary entries and letters from common soldiers. I am not sure yet if I want to include links to these on the individual unit pages, if I want to specifically have a diary/letter section of the site, or if I want to do both. This area is still very much on the drawing board.

It’s the only one I’ve seen. I followed your link and one of the Amazon reviewers mentioned the author’s plans to do the western and T-M armies. You never know, but after 13 years I’m not holding my breath for new volumes. I am a bit surprised it’s still in print after all this time.